My name is Thomas Enoksen and I´m from Oslo, Norway! I want to share with you some pictures I took on Christmas Eve of my little niece. These tree pictures is about the excitement, the thrill, the obsession of Santa Claus for a little 2 year old girl. These are all taken with my Leica M Monochrom with 50mm Summicron @ ISO3200 developed in Lightroom 4.

I like all three. I like the imperfection of the 4rd one. And I like the sense of anticipation in the second. What post processing program did you use? Santa gave me the complete edtition on Nik’s Software so I’m looking forward to playing with the b/w conversion from my OM-D. He also gave me some new 12mm fast Olympus glass so I’m all smiles :-)

Really, Kaïs?
How about elaborating on that? Why do you feel the need to challenge someone’s opinion? If you want to comment about the pictorial then do so. Please have some respect for the contributors and everyone else here on the site. Your trolling isn’t appreciated here.

What about using the right word without emphasing ?
Too many “awesome” “fabulous” “amazing” used on Steve’s forum for normal or average photos. What would you say if you see a Brassai’s or a Crewdson’s photo ?
Shooting my cat with a MM doesn’t make the photo a piece of art… Come on guys, be serious…

I spent 2 weeks in Norway in March 2012, a beautiful country yet very very very expensive. I posted a couple of photos on my blog www.http://kaisdebali.blogspot.fr/2012/05/welcome-to-norway.html but I’d never consider my photos as “amazing” of “fabulous”. Just regular photos.
But if you didn’t get my point, that’s fine. No problem.

Sure !!! Very nice people, and nicer landscapes, specially the Lofots. What amazed me is the color and transparency of the water. Too bad I couldn’t see any nothern lights because of bad weather.
I’d really like to go back there in summertime to please my eyes.

But man, as a French guy, I felt poor in there :
7 euros for a muffin, wow !!! ;-)

Kais,
I agree with your following statements and I really enjoyed your Welcome To Norway blog. Great composition and use of colors. I can see their is big difference in both your photos and Thomas’s and I understand what it takes to make a good photo. I personally think it’s harder to shoot color compositions. When background colors detract and distract from the subject, it is too easy to achieve balance simply by desaturating the colors. B&W photography is not an excuse for bad color photography.

And James, my original comment was about Kais “shooting the messenger” instead of “messaging the shooter”.

Kais makes a good point – the increasingly overblown language for the very ordinary gradually has a very negative effect where anything is hailed as the greatest.

Vinced’s instruction to “have some respect for the contributors” is not only a wrong allegation since it is not disrespectful to ask that moderate terms be used for ‘moderate’ works, but it also implies that there should be no discussion about the merit or otherwise of other people’s oinions. Of course there should be! What nonsense. It is at the very centre of discussion about art.

Then there is Vince’s attempt to stifle such criticism by labelling Kais as a “troll”. Very poor form indeed and something for which Kais should be thoroughly ashamed.

Agreed, number 1 is my fave as well. I also wonder what has caused the. candle malady… cheap filter on?

Nice light Thomas, and you seem to have a good grip on how to get the most out of the Monochrome with LR, I have read that some shooters have found the post processing to be tough to learn with this camera.

Well exactly, Thomas. It certainly was me who made the comment “not good”. I can only reply as “the viewer”, no one else.

I’m not sure what “working ouside the box” means, as I don’t know what “the box” is. Can you define what it is to you?

As an example, I mentioned the central placement of the little girl. That has my eye going from the centre then to the left, then to the right, repeatedly. I would rather have the eye more located on the girl. Might be that others find the same and then that becomes a “box” or a way of composition. Is that what you were thinking, too?

I know it’s not easy to capture the candid moment or a feeling and at the same time provide good viewpoints and surrounds which don’t distract from the intent.

I can see where you are trying to go with it. I am not expert but just my opinion maybe have had the hand lower than her face (i.e. stand a little taller)….but hey…it’s about candid moments and that easier said than done!

I agree with James re some cropping of one and two, but not a lot. Perhaps one just crop from right hand side (no christmas tree on that side) and cut a small amount of top of tree, placing the little girl on the right hand side. Normally I prefer the right side but the tree background is on the that side.

As for two i’d play with it as well and crop out the dark wall or along bottom slightly.

I can only imagine how difficult it could be though with a RF and trying to get focus right and composition!!!

Most rangefinder shots published here have a “smack-in-the-middle” type of composition. My guess is it’s got to do with the central placement of the rangefinder spot and the inability of the photographer to use that system in a more creative way.

I don’t use a rangefinder. I use (d)slr’s, and use a “technique” commonly used with slr’s and rangefinders alike: focus using the central focusing spot, recompose, shoot. This requires of course that you previsualize the composition tou want to create, and that you have a good eye for how a situation evolves.

The only things that can then hit you in the knee are field curvature of the lens used and unexpected changes in the situation.

Agree. Many Leica shooters tend to have mid-centered compositions. Kind of boring after a while. One can see the quality of the lens, but nothing interesting regarding one of the main challenges in photography: composition.

That is the perfect analysis, well written. Overall, pretty poor quality. And, I second your statement that the third one is not good. And it does not depend on the viewer and there are no “broken rules”, as the author tries to argue… it is a bad photo, one that should have been deleted, the main subject is completely disturbed by that hand (BTW, front out of focus is very disturbing in itself), not to mention that the contrast of the image is flat. Good constructive criticism does not have to say always flattering cliches….

The writer of this article posts three reasonably pleasant shots. It is specified that they are taken with a camera which costs a very large amount of money (and a non-cheap lens with it), and the result is the discussion here.

If he had said they were taken with a three hundred dollar point and shoot and processed via Silver Efex, would be be seeing the same discussion?